


Coaptation

by inktomi



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Assassins & Hitmen, F/M, Gen, Mary is Moran, Post-Reichenbach, Redemption, Secret Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-28
Updated: 2014-06-24
Packaged: 2018-01-26 22:08:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1704290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inktomi/pseuds/inktomi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Co`ap`ta´tion<br/>n. 1.  The adaptation or adjustment of parts to each other, as of a broken bone or dislocated joint.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally supposed to be assassin!mary hooking up with assassin!john, and Sherlock trying to hunt them down but ending up as a friend instead. Then it ran away from me and, idk, it became (slightly depressing) plot, but with a happy ending! :D

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I've got to go," she says, and watches him nod. It is not even a lie. There are always people who want others dead.

It starts in Cappadocia.

The weather is mild - cold but not biting, though the winter has started to creep into the trees. Mary sits with the mountains towering behind her and watches the leaves fall, littering the ground with red and brown. It's peaceful. A small breeze picks up, oscillating the flat edges of the dead. They flutter weakly atop the path, and Mary waits patiently for them to rise and be borne away.

A man approaches. He's short and broadly handsome, and there is nothing overtly threatening about him, but she slides her hands into her coat anyway. She lifts her head to smile politely at him as he draws near. He smiles back.

"Afternoon," he nods.

His accent is pleasantly British. She smiles more genuinely this time - a little rounder at the corners of her cheeks, already liking the way his eyes, warm and steady, never leave her face. She returns the greeting, and his eyes turn up at the sides. He requests permission to sit, and she graciously moves over on the bench.

The stone is cool where she now rests. He is a warm presence at her side. They watch the leaves fall, quiet and companionable. People pass by: a woman bundled in green, a laughing family, a tired old man. She fingers the metal hidden in her coat and counts the dead. An hour passes, then two, and the sky is a brilliant tapestry of colour over the distant grandeur of the mountains.

By this time, she has already thought of eight different ways to kill him. She is a little sorry, but only just a little.

"I’m John Watson," the man says suddenly. He turns to her with an easy smile, golden-red in the sunset, reaching out for a handshake. He's wearing gloves, but so is she. She accepts.

"Mary Morstan," she gives, and returns the smile. His handshake is as solid as the rest of him. She leaves her other hand in her pocket, but so does he.

"Here on holiday?" she asks, and sticks her hand back in her coat.

He laughs. "Kind of. Running away from my problems and probably making new ones in the process, but what can you do, right?"

“We watch sunsets and falling leaves,” she says, a small smile on her face. “And when the sun sets we move on. And then winter comes, and more leaves fall, and there will be more sunsets and shorter days, and then we wait for spring.”

“So poetic,” he says, and his smile disappears from his mouth but not from his eyes. “But the sun hasn’t set yet.”

She straightens at that, and turns to face the hills. The last of the light creeps along the rocks, a gradual line of darkening. The way he says it almost sounds like a promise, but she knows better than to trust the promises of people like them.

Still.

“A few more minutes, then,” she acquiesces. The path is empty and the chill is beginning to set in. She tugs her coat around herself tighter, and watches.

The sun disappears below the horizon.

She looks over, and he is looking back.

"So," he says. "What now?"

 

-

 

Eight years ago Mary was a fresh-faced agent who believed, as a culmination of an adolescence spent reading detective novels, spy thrillers and - as a secret guilty pleasure - several worn paperback romances, that justice and love were entities that would play themselves out to gleeful fruition in the world. Her colleague laughed when she told him this one night two weeks into stakeout, after a mutual agreement to never again speak about the merits of jellybeans versus M&Ms, because _grown CIA agents should at least attempt not to sound like squabbling children_ , he'd said, covering his mouth in mock shame.

 _Darling_ , he'd said to her, the laughter beginning to dry out of his voice, leaving the endearment pressed thin. _Darling, maybe in some world, but not ours. Just you wait._

She'd waited, and three years later she knelt with her hands wet to the wrist in his blood, and something fierce and breaking in her chest. She kept his gun but not her name, and she killed every last one of them who dared to hurt someone she loved. And she moved on.

Still.

"Take me to dinner," she says to John Watson, and watches everything shift.

 

-

 

John Watson shifts: his hair curls over the nape of his neck, and he nods.

He adds, "No poison."

"No poison," she agrees with a smile.

They have dinner.

It's a cozy little Italian place run by a husband and wife; their daughter tumbles around in the back of the room playing with dolls and blocks. They talk about safe things: politics, sports, headline news. After a while it morphs almost into a secret showcase, and she would be more impressed if she weren't so amused: _A corrupt Chinese official was found dead before his trial three days ago, did you hear? No, but did you hear about the property owner in Dubai? Oh, the one who had a heart attack on his luxury yacht - but what a terrible man; I sincerely congratulate his arteries on a job well done._

"Did you hear about the Russian businessman last month?" he asks, grinning wide enough to let her know: yes, the one that disappeared and was only found days later in the elevator shaft of his office building; wasn't that neat?

"Oh!" she exclaims. "Yes, that was so bizarre. I wonder how it happened."

"Who knows?" he shrugs, and sips his wine placidly. "It's probably a trade secret."

She's shed her coat in the warmth, but he's kept his jumper on. It's shapeless and a faded pastel and it makes him look soft, gentle and unmistakably British. She likes it.

Still.

He takes another sip of his wine, and sets it down carefully. It trembles as it reaches the tablecloth. She watches the red liquid ripple against the glass, but not a drop escapes.

He frowns, and manages to look disappointed instead of furious. She likes that, too. The others had not been so considerate.

"I thought we had a truce," he says mildly.

She can see the coolness in his eyes; a sharpening, a concealment, a hurt. Dangerous. She doesn't smile.

"It's not poison," she says.

He spreads his fingers and they move apart by millimetres. He arches an eyebrow and lets it speak for him.

"It’s not fatal,” she amends. “Even water is poisonous in excessive amounts, if we’re quibbling about definitions.”

“Alright,” he agrees. His eyes have not changed. He tilts his head in professional curiosity. "How did you do it?"

"Trade secret. Hands on the table, please."

He half-grins, and complies from where he's been inching towards his jacket. "Maybe I deserved that. What do you want?"

"I want to hear a story," she says, her voice quiet and steady, and her hand on her knives just out of sight, just in case.

"What about?"

"James Moriarty," she says, and his hands tighten, and she finishes: "And of course, Sherlock Holmes."

 

-

 

"Why?" says John Watson. His eyes are dark and hard. There is little of the gentleman in him now. The way he keeps himself in check is not the way of courteous restraint -- it is predatory assessment, the chained anger of a solider in control.

"Because I want to know what happened," she says, with a smile fierce enough to match his heart. "And then maybe I'll tear his miserable organisation into shreds."

John exhales, and rests his back against his seat. She breathes.

The restaurant is cozy in the dim light and the white noise of disparate chatter. The owners in the back make familial, soothing sounds with dishes and loving words; there is a group of young friends on the table to their left - backpacking, laughter overflowing like the spilt beer and their cries for _napkins! hurry, it's creeping towards the edge!_ A gentle elderly couple with delicate reading glasses and coats perch in the corner, trading witticisms in wavering voices. There would be seven witnesses at least. There is one exit.

She waits, and watches.

"Alright," he says at last. The air changes. His face sets into a decision. His hands shift on the tabletop. She does not relax. "But I don't trust you. I want the antidote, first."

"Of course," she says, as easy as her smile. She reaches down and pushes her glass of wine across the table.

John laughs. The sound is a quiet thing, tiny and wholesome in the fullness of his approval. He brings both of his trembling hands up and takes a drink. The liquid glistens on his lip, orange in the candlelight. "Ohh," he murmurs, "you must have been very smooth. I haven't missed something like that for a long, long time."

"I've had practice. And you were distracted."

"You are very distracting," he agrees. He finishes the glass. She watches it disappear down his throat, the curving shadow of his Adam's apple against the tendons of his neck.

"Thank you," she says, when he has set down the glass. "I was trying to be."

"Someone like you - you don't even need to try," he says, leaning forward in earnestness. His mouth quirks upward, every line of his face conveying utmost sincerity. She smiles back, and reaches across with her hands to still his palms.

"Hands on the table at all times, please," she whispers, and the corners of his eyes turn upward in the paradoxical happiness of being caught. Their hands remain stacked like that as he tells her the story of his best friend.  The restaurant closes, and then they walk out side by side in the cold air, intertwining fingers like the words woven of friendship and love and genius.

"You're a good storyteller," she says, when he has finished, and the look on his face is something so soft and raw that it is painful to look at. She looks away across at the path, and back again, and he hasn't killed her yet. He looks at her with an expression that makes her understand he knew what she was thinking.

"Oh, Mary," he whispers. "Not all the world is unkind."

She disentangles her fingers. The warmth of his hand in hers is such a natural comfort that she is momentarily stunned by its loss. She regrets it and immediately regrets regretting it.

"I've got to go," she says, and watches him nod. It is not even a lie. There are always people who want others dead.

"See you," he says, a smile like a promise.

"Yes," she says.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She cannot afford to love, but standing this close to someone and feeling unafraid of death: maybe that’s as close as she will ever get.

She's having a bowl of authentic coconut jelly when he makes good on his word. The sky is a painfully idealistic blue, and the sea is dotted with navy-painted hulls and white triangular sails. It's a postcard day; the cool white semi-solid quivers on her spoon and slips down her gullet easily, and she is a foreign tourist in a sunhat, an _ang moh_ in pale skin and blonde hair in a corner of Malaysia by the shore. She has a wig, of course - she'll use it for work, but it itches and right now all she wants do is enjoy the breeze.

Her phone trills a default and hideous tone. She rolls her eyes and slides a finger across the screen. She says, "Of course I'm working. In fact, I can't talk right now," and she hangs up. She takes another mouthful, uncaring and perfect in the sun. It is delicious.

She's sitting at a fragile metal table in front of a drink stall. It's one of those growing waterfront investment places with hotels and shops springing up from the ground like fungus. There's nothing much to do yet but spend cheap money and kill a few businessmen, so when she catches sight of John Watson, she cleans out the rest of her coconut husk bowl, and settles in to wait.

"Hello," he says pleasantly, as he settles into an opposite chair. She examines his dressing. Maybe a gun in his pocket, a knife at his hip, maybe a coil of wire in his shoes. She's in shorts and a tank top - the weather is bafflingly sunny this close to the equator - but she has more than enough on her if it comes to a fight.

"Hello," she answers. "How did you find me?"

"I was in China a few days ago," he says without hesitation, setting his elbows on the table. "I met these fortune tellers. They say that soulmates are connected by a red thread, so I looked around and followed the trail--"

Mary throws her straw at him, and he laughs in quiet shakes, bending over and glancing up through his fringe, his eyes as bright as his smile, his mouth open with happiness. She finds herself smiling back even as she says, "No, seriously," and he says, "I've been all over the world looking for you."

"No," she corrects. "You've been all over the world leaving behind bodies."

"The two are not mutually exclusive," he says, perfectly logical. She knows that too. In Amsterdam she'd thought she'd seen him across a bridge, and her heart had lurched and she'd reached into her coat, but when she looked up again he was someone else. She'd almost shot her contact after that: a combination of lingering nerves and intense dislike at the way he spoke, but in the end she'd killed who needed killing and collected assets that needed collecting, and John Watson did not appear in her Amsterdam again. In China, though-

Very deliberately, she does not tense.

"How long have you been following me?" she asks.

John glances at her, and says, "Only since China."

China, Vietnam, Malaysia. Three countries, three dead, picking off liabilities. Nothing too incriminating. She licks her lips, wishing for another bowl of jelly. How could she have missed him? Careless, careless, or maybe he's just that good. It's a terrifying thought and she brushes it aside.

"Why approach me now?" she asks.

John leans forward. "I'm tired of chasing you around." He says, "Travel with me."

Mary breathes. Minutes pass. He waits. She should say no, but. It's a risk, but.

She calculates, and decides.

"Yes," she says, and he breaks into a smile as bright as the equatorial sun.

 

-

 

In a way, it's not that different from what she'd been doing. There's still disguises, and still the work: the preparation, the shooting, the cleanup. Basic, universal things. She merely rearranges her schedule to accommodate new destinations. It's a bonus if they have things to do in the same country; if not, she plays tourist for a day or two and walks around marketplaces. She listens out for accents and code-mixing and fascinating local phrases. It's a nostalgic remnant of her university days, her half-complete linguistic degree that has remained in her thoughts if not in her name. But that is nothing new either.

What is different is this: she learns who John Watson is.

It’s the little things, like like the way he drinks his tea, and the way he hangs up his jumpers to dry, or the way he wipes his gun. And it’s the big things. Things like: he has an addiction to danger. (So does she.) Things like: he is fast, ruthless, efficient. (So is she.) Things like: he has an unhealthy obsession with his dead best friend, whom he suspects is not as dead as has been claimed. (She does not tell him she knows he is right.)

They stay in separate rooms. After a few months, she stops setting up traps at her room door, but keeps the chain fastened and the gun under her pillow. Some nights she stays up and listens for his return. He moves soundlessly enough that she would be hard-pressed to hear him coming if he tried, but his footfalls upon entering the apartment are considerately loud. She closes her eyes to running water and the gurgle of pipes, and sleeps.

Somehow, it works out.

 

-

 

"I'm seeing him everywhere," he murmurs to her one unearthly night. There is no moon and they are in Romania, walking down the street post-supper. She has somewhere to be in two hours - an important transaction to oversee.

“Who?” she asks, even though she already knows the answer.

He turns towards her, face shadowed under orange of the street lights, and she bears his gaze until a passing car forces her to step to the side. The pavements here are sporadic and uneven. He quirks his lips, a tiny movement in the half-darkness, and slides to the inner side of the road in a gesture of protection against cars and fast-moving vehicles. She accepts the chivalry; it will not last much longer. She is seeing Sherlock everywhere, too.

Four streets later, he says, “I’m not going to leave you, you know.”

“What?” she is startled into saying.

“Whatever happens.” His mouth is flat, eyes serious. His hair is haloed orange under the halogen lights, less than an arm’s length away. “Sherlock can live with it. God knows I’ve put up with enough for him, he’ll jolly well do the same for me or I’ll kill him myself, and properly this time.”

She finds herself smiling hard, despite herself. “You don’t mean that. You can’t know that. You don’t even know why I work alone.”

“So tell me.”

“I can’t,” she says simply. The smile falls off her face, and she can see him sting with the loss of it. “It’s not something you can live with.”

“That’s not for you to decide.”

“And it’s not something that I can live with - having told you, and holding you to a promise I know you cannot keep.” Her voice is sharp in the night, and he drags a hand through his hair in frustration.

“Can’t you just _trust_ me?”

Mary stops walking. “I do,” she says quietly, because she does. John Watson is kind and noble for all that this occupation requires, and if there is anyone she would trust it is him. Another car passes, and then another. The headlights flash and illuminate and retreat, and John stands by her side, waiting.

“I love you,” he says, and it sounds like wonder and certainty in one.

She swallows.

The abbreviated truth, then, because she cannot give any more, and at the look on his face she cannot give any less.

“I used to work for the CIA. I met someone. A few years later he was murdered because one of our superiors turned traitor, so I killed him and the rest of them and went on the run. Alright?”

She clips her words and turns to walk away, but John grabs her wrist, gentle enough to be a request, and she lets him pull her into his arms. She cannot afford to love, but standing this close to someone and feeling unafraid of death: maybe that’s as close as she will ever get.

Then he kisses her, and she forgets to taste the lies in her mouth.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Mary Morstan." Sherlock pauses, his voice thick with scorn. "Mary S. T. _Moran_.”

It lasts for two weeks.

He takes her out in between assignments and holds her hand in restaurants. He whispers goodnight into her mouth and the hollow of her neck, and presses fingers light against her back; she disentangles herself each time. His eyes are dark and uncomplaining, and he nods through his confusion and lets her be. This patience is unmerited. John does not know: Mary does not sleep with those she might have to kill.

The fifteenth day dawns bright and uneventful. She has concluded her business in Istanbul the day before, and spends the afternoon in the local market letting herself be dazzled by colourful ceramics and some truly fantastic doner kebab. She returns to the hotel in the evening to find John on the phone and plucking idly at the bedcovers, and she busies herself in the washroom until he is done.

Dinner is manti and baklava a ten minute walk away. It is good and filling, and even after that John stops by the hotel restaurant to purchase a bottle of wine on the way back. There is a queue, so she brushes her fingers to his and takes the lift up for first use of the shower. The honey still lingers in her mouth when she enters the room to find Sherlock sitting on the bed.

He is pointing a gun directly at her.

“Shut the door,” he says.

His voice is deeper and more tired than she remembers. Sherlock holds the gun like he knows how to use it. He’s in a ratty t-shirt and pants, a discarded jacket by his side. It’s more casual than she’s ever imagined he could be and she swallows a comment as she closes the door behind her.

Sherlock motions for her to sit, and she walks slowly across the room to the chair at the dressing table. “Hands where I can see them.”

She places her palms on her lap and sits. There is a reassuring flat edge of a blade against the side of her thigh, but it’s too slow to compete with a gun at full attention.

“Mary Morstan." Sherlock pauses, his voice thick with scorn. "Mary S. T. _Moran_.”

Sherlock’s voice is thunder and venom. Mary would be more afraid of him if she hadn’t met another genius not so long ago, one with eyes like guillotines and madness like radiation fallout. Sherlock is pale and scrawny and favouring his left, and all she needs to do is find a distraction, and the rest is child's play. It is not Sherlock she is afraid of.

“A bit messy, isn’t it?” she comments mildly. “Doing this here.”

“You will not be in a position to worry about the clean up. I fail to see why you should care.”

“I care that John might come in any second.”

Sherlock pauses at that, and looks at her properly for the first time. His eyes actually widen, and it would be comical if she weren’t on the wrong end of the deduction. She tightens her fists at her side, unable to stop what is coming: “You love him.”

"No," she denies.

Sherlock looks faintly staggered. “What can you possibly hope to achieve now?”

The hotel door gives a beep, and begins to open.

 

-

 

Three things happen:

1\. Sherlock’s head begins to turn.  
2\. Mary sends her knife flying with a snap of her wrist.  
3\. John drops the wine.

The knife catches the flesh of Sherlock’s hand, and he hisses and drops the gun, bullet slamming into the wall. Mary dives into a roll and resurfaces with the gun in her hands and at Sherlock’s head, and looks up to see John’s gun in perfect line with her heart.

“What. Is. Going. On.” John bites out, eyes flashing like she hasn't seen since Cappadocia. The back of her spine turns cold and she compensates by settling the gun into the back of Sherlock's neck.

The hotel is full of ambient noise and a distinct lack of shouting. By some miracle no one has heard the shot or the wine shattering into the floor. The reflections of themselves lie in jagged shards, and wine drips gently from the edges. Sherlock clutches his palm, applying pressure, red falling through his fingers.

"Mary?" John's voice is soft and dangerous.

Sherlock makes a noise: possibly the beginning of a protest at being ignored, but Mary adds pressure to the gun and he falls silent.

"Do you remember what you said to me in Romania? What you promised?"

"I remember."

"You didn't think you'd actually have to keep it. You didn't believe me when I told you that you wouldn't want to."

John's face twists. "Mary-"

"Moran," corrects Sherlock, and Mary does not blow his brains out - because it is easier than saying it herself. "She's Moran, John. Second in command to Moriarty."

John flinches. He looks at her like she's slapped him, like she's killed his best friend.

For all intents and purposes, she has.

She's expecting the hardness when it comes. John's face sets into something foreign and closed, but she knows enough to read the anger and hurt in the steadiness of his gun and the steel in his back.

"Is that true?"

Sherlock starts, "Of course it's true-" and John says, "Shut up, Sherlock, you are dead, you have _zero privileges right now_."

Sherlock falls silent.

 _Thank you_ , she wants to say. Instead she makes herself tell the truth. "Moriarty's dead. I'm not second in command anymore."

She sees the weariness settle into John's frame as she says it. He's learnt to control his expressions, but his voice has resignation written in every syllable.

"Is that a way of saying you're out of favour - or a way of saying you saying you're on top now?"

"Does it matter?"

"Yes. No." He stops. "I don't know."

Mary's lips twist into a smile. "Moriarty was a ghost but he came out for Sherlock. As for me - I'm less of a drama queen. I wasn't a flashy sidekick, and I'm not a flashy ruler either. Not many people even know what I look like. I hope Sherlock didn't kill too many of my friends to find out."

"Just the one." Sherlock's voice is low and stilted, and out of the corner of her eye, John starts, and the look on his face is something wide and indecipherable. "The second sang like a bird."

"Ah," says Mary. "Witness protection?"

"Yes."

"He'll be dead within the week."

Sherlock laughs a little on the floor. "You don't have enough of an organization left to get to him. I've spent three years making sure of that."

"Don't be absurd, Sherlock," she smiles pityingly. "You know as well as I do that if the organisation gets too weak, the power vacuum and the resulting scramble for control would cripple a dozen cities across the world. All you've been doing is working at the edges and sticking needles into the web, trying to see how it unravels. Let me tell you: it doesn't. It went on without Moriarty and it'll go on without me."

"What do you mean, it'll go on without you?" asks John, and she looks at him with his bright eyes and steady hand, and she feels herself soften, like fruit rotting from the inside out.

"Well, I'll hardly be waltzing out of this room, will I?"

John's eyes burn into hers. She holds onto her gun, and then John says, "You could come with me. If you leave."

"John!" hisses Sherlock, utterly scandalized, and through her shock Mary reflexively shoves the gun into the back of his neck and snaps, " _Be quiet_."

"We could live in London," John carries on, as if Sherlock hadn't spoken at all. "I'd probably visit Sherlock every once in a while, because he never remembers to eat, and after three years of being dead I'd rather he stay alive, thank you very much," he looks pointedly at the barrel of her gun, and she throws him an unimpressed look in return. He shrugs. "It was worth a shot. You could be a mysterious reclusive leader, but for all my dubious moral standards your organisation is something that I've never really agreed with. So this only stands if you're prepared to quit."

Mary furrows her brow and lets the incredulity in her voice speak for her. "Why on earth would I quit? And why would you even want to be anywhere near me? I poisoned you on the first day we met."

"Because I love you," says John. "And I want to marry you."

On the floor, Sherlock makes an aborted choking noise. Mary retracts the gun a little and says to Sherlock, bewilderedly, "Go ahead, tell him what an idiot he's being."

Sherlock duly complies. "John, what are you _doing_?

John's eyes on hers are honest and unwavering. They cut somewhere deep and chaotic in her chest, and she almost flinches when he begins to speak. "I'm giving her a chance. Because she's made this year bearable, and sometimes even enjoyable, and she's as insane and beautiful and reckless as they come. Because she hasn't killed me yet, and because she hasn't killed you yet. Because I know she can be a better person than she thinks she is. And because in our line of work a second chance is a rare thing, and if I have the opportunity to give it to someone who deserves it then I will."

Sherlock is silent. The wine drips and quietly spreads into the floor. Mary stands and doesn't understand. It feels like the world is tilting beneath her, and there is nothing she knows to do with her hands. Her mouth shapes itself into sounds she doesn't remember saying, words falling into open air, unplanned. "I don't deserve a second chance."

"Even if you don't," he says. "You're getting one."

"I can't just up and leave. I'll need to set things up, logistics, people. There'll be those who'll try and hunt me down. Sherlock's damn _brother_ will try and hunt me down. I can't live in one place, even if it's with you."

"Don't worry about my brother," says Sherlock ruefully, and both of them startle. "Since you and John are both utterly and unreasonably in love, if you decide to persist in this insanity, I'm sure Mycroft can be persuaded."

John almost grins. "In other words, you really wouldn't mind giving your brother a massive headache."

Sherlock tilts his head. "Of course. And it's also a show of my goodwill and friendship," he adds, and John snorts and says, "You've got a lot more to work on there."

"Then Mary has to give me a chance to," replies Sherlock.

She looks at Sherlock. Untidy curls, wiry, bleeding into the floor: offering, asking. The gun rests an inch from his beautiful brain. She's ended lives in a heartbeat, but rarely ones so close. She does not understand. But.

"John," she begins. "If I pull the trigger now - would you kill me?"

John says simply, "Yes."

"One thing I have learnt in travelling with you," she says, smiling hard. "You lie and charm and kill. But you have never lied to me."

John waits. His hand extends, steady, patient, and there is no other way.

She uncurls her fingers and lets the gun slip loose. In the waiting between the release and the landing she feels like the one falling: like part of her has shattered in the anticipation, destroyed by grace. It was never meant to be a suicide mission, but John shifts forward and then his arms are around her, carrying her from the inside out, and something broken inside of her hurts like dying through the beginning of hope.

"Marry me?" he murmurs into her hair.

"Yes," she says, and holds on.


End file.
